“How do you know she didn’t kill herself? She could have just . . . stopped, let herself go under . . .”

“We know suicides, Miranda. The Mermaid wasn’t a suicide. The resonance, the tension of intentionality that attends a suicide was nowhere about her passing.”

Miranda pressed her hands together firmly, trying to keep them from shaking. Was it nerves? Was she feeling chilled? “Seven victims. You chose five files from my briefcase. Who are the others?”

Chance stared at her. “There’s also Galina’s child. Missing, and no body found—but you’re cold. We shouldn’t talk about this so soon after your nightmare.”

She giggled. “Angels and elementals and mind mazes. How can I trust any of this to be real?” By now her teeth were chattering. “Why am I shivering?” she asked herself, her voice high and tremulous.

Chance looked up at the tall hedges of the maze, his brows creased in vexation. “Let’s get you away from this.” He held Miranda’s wrist gently. “Please, Miranda, keep trusting me.”

She gazed up at him. Her eyes begged him to be a dream, to confirm his impossibility by evaporating or turning into the kind of surreal, laughable creature that can arise from bad digestion and vivid imagination. The unmistakable reality of the angel was fading, and her human defenses against mystery were beginning to fight back. Chance realized they could not communicate while she remained in this condition. Even the powers of his special tea blend would not be enough.

Sleep was not possible in the world he had made, but rest was. He guided Miranda to where the grass was thickset and soft, gently pushed her to sit down, and took her mind into a wakeful dream that smoothed the worry from her face and drained the tension from her limbs. She sighed, already looking through him to some calmer vision, and slowly settled herself down into the curled-up posture of a napping child.

“You should have anticipated this. She was too calm.”

Chance spun around, surprised to be surprised in his own backyard. When he saw who it was, he could only grimace. “You.”

His brother grinned at him. “Just keeping it in the family. You do need help, don’t you?”

The Trickster used the same appearance as his human body in places where there was no need to do so, a measure of how much human life had changed him. Medium height, stocky, and broad-faced, he kept hints of his former spider shape in the bristling hairiness of his arms and the twinkling glitter of his black eyes. Instead of simple cotton, he wore a white linen wrap around his waist—too long for an acolyte, too short for a chief. The hem was embroidered with a light dashing of gold thread, like the meandering trail of a vine.

Chance shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt. You might be able to go where I can’t.”